NEW ORLEANS — It was a month ago that Pamela Foster got a phone call she desperately wanted to believe was a mistake.
“I didn’t know what to do, I don’t know how I made it home, I was screaming in the car and I just hoped that it wasn’t true," she said.
She was told her husband, Glenn Foster Jr., died in police custody in a rural Alabama jail.
"I wanted to drive right back. I wanted to see. I needed to see because I wanted it to be a mistake, that it wasn’t him. That it was someone else, that it was a mistake," she said with tears running down her face.
Police say Foster led them on a chase after they tried to pull him over for speeding. The chase ended after police laid down a spike strip, blowing out the car’s tires to bring it to a stop. Foster was then taken into custody.
He was then taken to the Pickens county jail run by Sheriff Todd Hall.
Foster died two days after his initial arrest.
The family says what happened over those two days is a mystery. Without any answers, they are all left feeling stuck.
“It’s hard to grieve," Pamela said. "It’s hard to explain that to your children when they’re asking you what happened to daddy and why would someone want to kill daddy. I don’t know. That’s all I can tell them, I don’t know”
Multiple attempts have been made to get the official cause of Foster’s death, but according to the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency’s State Bureau of Investigation, due to the case being under investigation, no information has been made available to the family, their legal team or WWL.
This ongoing delay is why the family says they hired their own medical team to do an independent autopsy. The results showing Glenn Jr. did not die from natural causes and there was evidence of neck compression and strangulation
"It answered what we were already suspecting, but it did not make me feel any better," Pamela said. "I was angry and I felt helpless because it’s one thing to die from natural causes but it’s another thing to be deprived of life.”
Pamela said this has been the worst month of her life. But if there has been one silver lining, it’s how the people of New Orleans have responded in her family’s time of need
"It gives me comfort. Makes me want to stay here," she said. "Sometimes things happen and it makes you want to run away, but I can feel the love from people that he knew.”
Waiting and grieving are about the only things Pamela has been able to do.
Until more information is made available, she doesn’t have many more options.